Nielsen: 56-44 to Coalition

The first Nielsen poll for the year joins the chorus in showing a big slump for Julia Gillard and her government.

GhostWhoVotes reports the first Nielsen for the year has the Coalition leading 56-44 on two-party preferred, compared with 52-48 in the final poll last year. The primary votes are 30% for Labor (down five) and 47% for the Coalition (up four) – we’ll have to wait on the Greens. Even worse news for Julia Gillard on personal ratings, with Tony Abbott seizing a 49-45 lead as preferred prime minister compared with 50-40 to Gillard last time, and she trails Kevin Rudd 61% to 35%. However, the latter result is very similar to Abbott’s 58-35 deficit against Malcolm Turnbull. Opinion is divided on whether the parties should actually do anything about it: 52% support Labor changing leaders and 45% don’t (up four and down three), with eerily similar numbers for the Liberals (51% to 46%).

We also had overnight a Galaxy poll of 800 women voters concerning voting intention and attitudes to the leaders. The voting intention figures were 36% for Labor, 46% for the Coalition and 10% for the Greens, for a two-party preferred lead to the Coalition of 53-47 – about where you would expect it be when allowing for a 55-45 poll trend, the size of the gender gap in recent years and perhaps a smidgin of house bias in favour of the Coalition on Galaxy’s part. When respondents were asked if they were concerned about Abbott saying “‘no’ to everything”, his views on abortion and “the way he treats women”, abortion recorded the lowest response rate among Labor voters and the highest among Coalition voters (albeit by slight margins in each case). The divide was still wider for the question of whether was Abbott was a misogynist, breaking 44-24 for among Labor voters and 9-69 against among Coalition voters for a total of 25-44. Thirteen per cent of respondents said they were less likely to vote for Gillard because she was unmarried and has no children, and the same number said they were more likely to vote for Abbott for the opposite reasons.

UPDATE (18/2/2013): Essential Research breaks the freefall with the Coalition two-party lead back down to 54-46 after a week at 55-45, with Labor up a point on the primary vote to 35%, the Coalition down one to 47% and the Greens steady on 9%. The poll also finds 56% approval and 22% disapproval for recent thought bubbles about development of northern Australia. Other questions relate drugs in sport, including the eye-opening finding that 52% would approve of a ban on sports betting.

Of course Galaxy’s poll favoured whatever will cause the most disruption for Labor. All Galaxy had to say was that it had taken a poll. We don’t even have to ask ‘what about’. The answer goes without saying!

They also drank lots of Red Bull. Rather than get pissed together they sat around letting lots of caffeine fight it out with the sleeping pills. Apparently it’s a well known way of getting a bit of a high and headache by the looks of it.

If the Labor party needs a narrative, then they sould simply say that they’re putting in place systems that will enable Australians to do great things both individually and in concert.

All the things they’ve done and/or plan to do, such as the NBN, gonski, NDIS, even going back to the reforms of BH and PK (opening up the economy) and the original union base are systems/platforms/processes for enabling Australians.

This goes beyond the Coalition’s bare “government should stay out of the way” narrative (when they’re in power) and counters the “government are intefering busybodies getting in everyone’s way” narrative (when someone else is in power).

I think this is consistent with the history of actions taken by Labor.

“One of those changes is that the ALP’s traditional constituency is disappearing.

The “constituency” may well be disappearing but the constituents are not.

To reiterate, they are merely grouped differently.

Whether they are conned to vote for Abbott or not is a different matter. Clearly some of them did between 19-56 72, and 1975-83 when there was no falling union membership and the associated “we’ll all be rooned” hyperbowl we see now.

My argument is simply that the word “narraive” in this context has been bandied around only recently ( from mid 2010, about June as I recall) by those seeking a new approach in criticising JG.

And as evidence of this they invent “narratives” retrospectively for past PM’s.

For example, as I wrote @4711 (P95) earlier today:

“Who ever wrote about Howard during 1996-2007 that ” isn’t it great that Howard’s taking us into the Iraq war, and we understand and accept it so much better because it fits under his overarching “narrative” ( did I ask what the fark this means yet?) of “nationalism, security and the triumph of capital over labour”. It’s a nonsense.”

Wahleed yesterday quoted this “narrative” to explain how Howard had one.

Well despite what Wahleed and others say, I believe JG has an overarching perspective under which all her work sits, and you have rightly pointed this out in regard to the NBN.

It is obvious to anyone who wants to see it ie social justice and future proofing the nation.

@R_Chirgwin what fascinates me is this. You are a journalist. You write for the register a UK blog. Yet you won’t call anyone at BT.

R_Chirgwin ‏@R_Chirgwin

@TurnbullMalcolm Detail on the analytical decisions made in scoping out FTTN for Australia, based on BT: http://bit.ly/11YWzNT <1/2>

R_Chirgwin ‏@R_Chirgwin

@TurnbullMalcolm I remarked this morning that e-mail is perfectly adequate in seeking confirmation of documented facts.

Turnbull also continues to question Mike Quigley, since his appointment of NBNCo, when originally the Coalition were trying to frame Mike Quigley on past conduct and that he did a crime when no jury found a crime at all:

About this blog

William Bowe is a doctoral candidate with the University of Western Australia’s Discipline of Political Science and International Relations. He has been running the electoral studies blog The Poll Bludger since January 2004, independently until September 2008 and thereafter with Crikey.